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Wow. I saw something at a client site a few weeks ago that inspired the cartoon for this week.

This is real life.

As it is every week and every posting with me.

And.

Unexpected to say the least.

I’ll let you in on the actual pictures of the inspiration tomorrow… but for now let’s continue with the point for this week.

Sometimes it feels like you are working on the same thing day after day.

At least sometimes it feels that way to me. Maybe it is just me (smile).

Kinda like a treadmill. This is something that you walk on forever and actually get nowhere.

Are you there in your [work] life?

What about your Team?

And your Organization?

What can help you get out of this — or “off the treadmill?”

Umm.

I could sugar coat it with a bunch of inspirational bla bla, and sometimes I do that.

Tonight… zero sugar coating. It is not going to happen, as sometimes you need to hear this and actually take a hard knock of reality (like sometimes people on the team need to be “voted” off the island!).

Here goes.

The only way off the treadmill is for you to make a change.

Take responsibility.

Be accountable.

To who?

You.

The rest of the Team and Organization will follow.

Or will they?

Does it really matter to you?

Worry about you first.

Really.

The rest will follow.

Or not.

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So.

A few weeks ago had someone in a class explain this. He was trained as an Antropologist — not a software developer.

Interesting dude. Really.

Let’s say your current organizational system is like a river flowing down stream.

How rough varies.

Introduce change.

Any change.

Just one.

Scrum for example (funny how that gets worked into this conversation, eh?).

Pretend that change is a boat (or canoe, as drawn!).

Insert a Chicken and Pig for some humor (smile).

Following along with me?

Now.

Paddle.

What happens when you stop paddling?

The river flushes you back down stream.

That’s the gist.

Easy brilliance.

Does this apply in your current situation?

If you are about to just embark on this journey, remember to always keep paddling!

Stop paddling and you have made a choice to give it up — and make room for something else to take its place.

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The Guest Blogger this week is Michele Sliger, a fellow Certified Scrum Trainer and awesome person in general (smile).

A few weeks ago some of the Trainers got together in a super-secret-location-on-Earth for a couple of days.

We had a lot of fun, I learned a ton, and you can be sure I will write more about it in this blog in the future!

Michele posed the question to the Trainers, “What are the Scrum Values?”

And. Gulp. I could not name all of them.

Shame on me.

Or? Are they something I just *do* like a lot of people already?

Either way, I thought this would be a good platform for Michele to discuss the Scrum Values and give some great examples for you to use with your Scrum Teams.

Keep learning… I do daily….

Here is the write-up from Michele:

====================

Like Mike, I’m a Certified Scrum Trainer and I make my living teaching Scrum and coaching Scrum teams.

One of the things I teach is the Scrum values. Do you know what they are? Take a second and see if you can name them all.

I’ll give you a hint: there are five, they are one word in length, and one of them is not Honesty. Now stop reading for a moment and when you think you’ve got them all, come on back.

Ready?

Okay, let’s see how you did.

I’m sure none of you cheated by going to the first Scrum book, “Agile Software Development with Scrum,” and flipping to the last chapter.

(I can hear it now: “Heck, she said that Honesty wasn’t a value, so where’s the problem?”)

The five Scrum values are, in no particular order:

1. Commitment
2. Focus
3. Openness
4. Respect
5. Courage.

Now what do you suppose these mean?

Ask a roomful of people and you’ll get a roomful of answers.

“Openness means that we will tell the product owner ‘no’ when we can’t do any more work in the Sprint.”

“Openness means that we will tell management that we are doing Scrum even though we are afraid they will make us stop.”

“Openness means that when my colleague takes a three-hour lunch break instead of finishing her tasks that I will have a difficult conversation with her.”

“Openness means telling you that I did in fact cheat — I looked up the values in the back of the black book.”

(I once had an argument with a co-worker on what ‘being truthful’ meant. He said that it wasn’t lying if he went to a topless bar and didn’t tell his wife. I said it was a lie, one of omission. We went back and forth, each sure of our morality. So I’m pleased that Ken was careful in his naming with the value of Openness, instead of something like Honesty or Truthfulness, so I don’t have to have arguments over what truth means!)

Because we each interpret the values differently as individuals and as teams, we really need to take a look at each value and decide as a team what that value means to us.

Here are a couple of ways you can do that:

If your group does regular brown-bag lunches, open spaces, or Scrum cocktail hours, pass out copies of that last chapter and say, ‘This is what we’ll be talking about at our next get-together.’

Then have that informal conversation and see what the team thinks about the values.

Are there any that surprised them?

Are there any that weren’t in line with their personal values?

Can they say that the team has been adhering to all the values?

Are there any values that they think should be listed that are not?

And are there any values that they would like to make a bigger, more overt, part of their daily activities?

When working on the facilitation of team working agreements, try this exercise.

List the values, and this simple template that can be used to turn each value into an actionable working agreement:

We believe in [value] therefore we will [do something].

For example, your team might come back with:

“We believe in respect, therefore we will show up on time for all meetings.”

The point is to get those values on the wall somewhere, where they can serve as reminders to the team of the drivers behind the Scrum practices, and of how the team has chosen to work together.

Remember, Scrum is not only value-driven in how it provides the most important features first to the customer, it is also value-driven in how the people choose to work together to get the job done.

====================

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So last week the post was a little long, and I put out some real life information that hit home hard for me. I received a ton of great feedback and people offering a lot of great advice. One thing I do want to make clear is that client was not my only client — something I have learned to not do in the past (depend on 1 client 100% of the time). As a consultant, this is a position you want to get yourself into. Really. Look at me as an example!

This week.

Um.

Where is our “old” ScrumMaster?

I kinda liked him. He was a little “off” at times; however, he started to grow on me and help with a lot of examples.

He seems to have disappeared last week.

Seems to have gotten himself whacked by some shady characters.

Oh no.

What has Tony done. What have I done?

At this point, there is now a [hot] ScrumMaster who has no problem saying, “Yes” to anything and everything asked of her.

Um.

Is this dangerous?

One word.

YES.

Notice the usage of capital letters above.

YES I AM YELLING THIS TO YOU THIS IS DANGEROUS.

I am trying to make a point (smile).

And, you may be asking yourself, “Mike… What point are you trying to make this week?”

Really?

You do not see it?

Look hard.

Read the comic strip above again, and again, and again.

Then, send me an e-mail (or write a comment on this blog entry) about what you think it means.

Really.

C’mon.

Take action and do it.

It will take you less than three minutes.

Please.

Gotta run….Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.

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Hi,

Just wanted to let you know that the comic strip and blog entry this week is going to hit a nerve.

It did.

With me.

Be prepared for a reality check.

Sometimes life just throws them at you.

Thank you,

- Mike Vizdos

Contact Information

www.implementingscrum.com
www.michaelvizdos.com
AOL IM: MikeV Work
Skype: mvizdos

=========

For a complete list of my upcoming workshops and public appearances please visit www.michaelvizdos.com/enroll.

Need a Mentor? Take a look at www.michaelvizdos.com/telephone and please let me know your feedback and thoughts.

==========

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This is the conclusion of a three part series for the week. It has been interesting for me to write and people have written me some great emails about their thoughts on this.

Thank you.

Two nights ago I posted the first of three comic strips by a guest artist (my son Dominic). You can view that here if you have not already seen it. Part two is here. Please remember that our awesome guest artist is turning eight very soon — and drawing is one of his passions.

So take a look back at the first two panels of the series for the week. I’ll wait.

The first is where the Chicken asks the age old question.

The second, well, the Chicken get attacked by what I will call “reality.”

And.

Reality happens all the time in each of our lives.

Really.

I guess that is why they call it reality.

This final panel shows that Pig (team member) has the back of the Chicken.

What does this mean?

Think about it.

Without the Chickens — or possibly outside stakeholders in your world — the project would probably never have been funded.

Or.

Continued to be funded.

Remember, in an agile world funding really should depend on a team delivering potentially shippable software each iteration.

This is tough to do.

And.

Chickens can help the Pigs remove the impediments.

So.

Why should Chickens and Pigs work together?

Hmmmm.

This panel of the cartoon shows that while the Chicken is being attacked by their monsters (outside the project room where the Pigs are working on the Sprint Backlog), the Pigs (team members) see that sometimes they need to step-up and actually help the Pigs “fight” the monsters.

Even if sometimes the Pigs are left for dead.

Huh?

Think about how this can be applied to what is happening on your team today.

It really and truly is a symbiotic relationship.

That must be fostered.

Who’s responsibility is this?

Think about that and talk to your team about it.

And remember both need the other to survive.

Hope this helps!

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Some of you may be familiar with the term, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas….”

Well, tonight I am introducing a new guest writer to the blog, a guy I have worked with for almost the past three years on some major enterprise rollouts of Scrum and co-train with him on a pretty regular basis. His name is Mark Pushinsky and this “enlightenment” came to him a few years ago and we have been waiting on how to actually introduce this to the Scrum Community.

So… without further ado… here is his write-up on the topic (and thanks to Tony as usual for the cartoon!).

I may add something to it later this week (smile).

=================

I was on my way back from Vegas sitting on a plane, with a massive hangover…….and this thought occurred to me.

I know they say that, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” but this occurred to me on the plane ride home and I am pretty sure we cleared Nevada airspace before it did so I feel compelled to share it.

Do you know about the “Cone of Uncertainty”? It is a phenomena that people in software use to describe the fact that when you start a project you have no idea when you’ll finish.

The longer the project goes and the closer you get to finishing the better/more accurate your estimate. Basically you are pretty sure your going to finish it the day before its done.



We have been trying to make it go away in software for many years. Fancy new estimation techniques, months and months of analysis, and brute force have not materially changed the fact that software projects are unpredictable!

Period!

Managers having been trying for decades to make it disappear/pretend it doesn’t exist/figure out how to make it turn from a cone into a cylinder.

Yet time and time again the uncertainty in projects remains.

The epiphany that occurred to me is that Agile or Scrum flips it around. This means that if you ask me what I can deliver in the next 2-4 weeks I am pretty accurate, if you ask me what I am going to deliver 3 months from now I have some uncertainty, but I can give you a reasonable guess, and if you ask me what I can deliver 6 months from now I have no idea…….





When we teach Estimation and Planning in class, we make a point of saying that Agile does not make the “Cone” disappear.

Nothing will!

We use light weight, proven techniques to make our best guess at long term plans.

We don’t pretend to know the end…….in fact we are pretty sure it will change……and we commit to be back in 2-4 weeks to tell you how its changed.

Then we focus on short term commitments, doing the right things, executing well, and delivering real business value.

I have found that after a couple of iterations of working that way we get customers focused more on prioritization, the next release, and getting impediments removed.

They begin to worry less about when the whole thing will be done.

I think the best way to end a project is to stop working on it before all of “The Requirements” have been implemented.

The 80/20 rule, right?

=================

So there goes.

Mark is an awesome person, trainer, and mentor by the way…. While our opinions do not match 100% I love the opportunity to provide an outlet for different opinions and thoughts (even if we are competitors and collaborators in the marketplace).

Let me know if you are interested in contributing in the future!

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Hi all.

Today I’d like to issue you a challenge and follow-through tasks.

The “winners” get bragging rights.

Huh?

OK.

As you may (or may not know) there are a few regular characters in our comic strips. Each of the characters can be found by, “Meeting the Cast.”

Here is what I’d like you to do for me today — if not sooner.

Please.

Head on over to that page and read about what our characters are fleshing out to be (as “real” characters if we can take it that far).

People — it is OK if you do not understand what a “persona” is right now; basically, we want to have a little fun and see what the characters actually “look like” when they are not working in our comic strips. When they leave the office, what do they do? What are their hobbies? What are their dark secrets? Where do they vacation?

Those sort of questions should be addressed based on what we have already written about them today.

Or… if you totally disagree with what we have come up with — give us a better one!

Good or bad idea?

Who knows.

It will be a little fun. All rights remain ours to use in the future (although we will let people know who added what!).

And.

There will probably be a point to this little exercise.

Feel free to write me off-line or via the comment section underneath the original blog entry (or this one… I can be flexible).

Have fun.

Make it a team exercise.

See where it leads.

And get it done this week!

Thank you.

- mike vizdos
www.implementingscrum.com
www.michaelvizdos.com

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Today I am addressing something that has been bothering me — and others in the industry too — and maybe even you, my great reader!

Scrum talks about having having working software at the end of every Sprint (or iteration).

Wow.

Not a Requirements Document. Working Software.

Not a Design Specification. Working Software.

Not a great Architecture PowerPoint Presentation. Working Software.

Not Compiled Code. Working Software.

Not an incredible Test Plan with Automated Testing and complete coverage. Working Software.

Yikes.

Get the point here?

Not too preachy I hope (smile).

That is awesome, right?

“Working Software” then became recast or known a, “Potentially Shippable Product.”

Huh?

Is there a difference?

Yes.

There is a difference.

Think about it.

In your Scrum Teams today, do you have someone from your Production and Support areas involved with your Sprint on a daily basis? How about the Daily Scrum (or Daily Stand-up meeting)? What about in your Sprint Planning? Planning Poker?

Any planning?

At all?

Hmmm.

Now OK.

We may have different definitions of Production and Support people. You can look at them as one separate team, two separate teams, or actually part of your Scrum Team.

In Agile and Scrum, I’d argue that the Production and Support people should be an integral part of the Scrum Team.

In the end, it is the Scrum Team agreeing on the definition of, “Done” for the Sprint (or iteration).

And where does Working Software actually spend most of its usable life?

Say it with me now… “In Production and Support.”

Wow.

What a paradigm shift in the way you are working today.

Or is it?

And.

Think about this.

If your Scrum Team does not include the Production and Support people into your Scrum Team, you may be creating more “Working Software” than the rest of organization can handle.

What? You may be asking yourself?

Are you kidding me?

Nope.

I see this.

Often.

And.

One way I advise clients about handling this situation is to include the Production and Support people into the Scrum Team.

Do they always listen?

Nah.

And then they have a big dump truck full of stuff (waste…. work in process…. inventory….).

What does this cost an organization?

What is this costing your organization today?

Do you care?

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Ok.

OK.

I surrender.

Please.

Let’s stop the misquotes and fires about the virus-like position that has been taken by multiple people I quoted and see if we can come up with an answer that makes sense for all of us.

Especially you — the reader.

If you recall… two nights ago I presented a comic strip and blog entry about something I had seen over the weekend.

Wow.

I did not even come close to expecting the traffic and responses related to that one.

The first response (of many) came in yesterday morning:

Hi Mike,

I didn’t see Jason’s post, but as a preacher’s kid (make that double preacher’s kid) and Scrum Master (woof), I would take Jason’s comments as a complement. I DO think you are like a preacher - but like you said - not preachy, more like a spiritual leader. Scrum and spirituality are very much linked in my mind because of the emphasis on continuous improvement.

As Ghandi said – “Be the change you want in the world.” I believe that you do that by helping people question their beliefs, behaviors and discuss them. Like you, my pastor does not us what to think or how to think it, but ask those probing questions to help us come to our own core values. I find this to be generally true in the UCC – United Church of Christ.

Anyway – I read your site religiously (ha ha). I use your cartoons to prompt discussion and to keep the humor in the air when things get hard. Please continue to post.

Thanks,
Christy Zuzelo

Ohhhhhhhh K. Um….. Daughter of two preachers kids? Yikes. I will not even delve into THAT topic here (smile) but I am sure Christy is a well-adjusted adult who loves my comics.

[Christy thank you for the note — yours was one of many I wanted to post up here as a follow-up!]

So then,

Out of the blue I see this posting. Ashwin has been a great supporter (albeit it quiet up to his posting!) as most of you are.

Really?

You?

Quiet on this topic?

Why?

Plenty of others are joining into the fray..

HL Arlidge here.

And then someone named Ashwin (another long time reader of the blog) posts this entry.

Wow.

Jason Gorman got the guts (this is an Americanism) to put up his original posting with the cartoon, located here.

Phew. I do not need to post it here! I have permission to do so by the way… but go to his site to see what is happening!

Arlin fired more back here.

And then Jason more here.

Following all of this?

Wow.

Will it continue?

Probably.

is this a good thing?

What do you think? Post a comment or on your blog and let me know!

I do understand that getting stuff like this is important to everyone inside — and “outside” the Agile Software Development Community.

And, for the record, check out my posting on “ScrumMaster and Snake Oil.” A fun read. Or at least I think so.

Thank you.

- mike vizdos
www.michaelvizdos.com
www.implementingscrum.com

PS — I may have missed something here. But please post comments to this posting at the end!

Gotta run….Please send comments, questions, criticisms, ideas, or whatever here.

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